“In any war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man. Support Israel, defeat Jihad.”
This is the wording on a billboard, paid for by the American Freedom Defense Institute of infamous Islamophobe Robert Spencer, scheduled to appear on New York subways. It is fair enough too, because one of the sure signs of being civilised is to slander an entire race, in this case Palestinians, as savages. And if you can imply many millions of believers in a particular religion are savages too, that is an extra “civilised” bonus point right there.
It is such a breath of fresh air to hear such old-fashioned values expressed so boldly. After all, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, wrote in the 19th century in support of a Jewish state in Palestine: “For Europe we would constitute over there part of a bulwark against Asia as well as the advance post of civilisation against barbarism.”
Sure, this has been the basic logic behind support for Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for more than six decades, but in these days of “political correctness gone mad” too many people have been afraid to state such things openly for fear of being tarred as “racist scum” just because they express white supremacist views!
This billboard is just a particularly blunt expression of the basic view informing much mainstream discussion in the West. That is, that the West, with Israel as its “bulwark”, is fighting for “civilised man” (because sexism is another civilised trait) against savages who need liberal values of democracy, liberty and drone strikes that kill civilians brought to them by, well, drone strikes that kill civilians.
And no one can doubt that if there is any proof of being civilised, it must surely be to launch an illegal war for oil that tears apart a nation already devastated by a decade of crippling sanctions, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and, when you finally are forced to leave, pay no reparations for the damage done.
Another sure sign is to occupy one of the poorest nations on Earth to overthrow a regime of brutal fundamentalists then install a regime of brutal fundamentalists and then when the war that has possibly killed more than five million people (according to a recent study) and is clearly lost, negotiate to bring back the brutal fundamentalists you overthrew in the first place.
Luckily, it looks like no end is in sight in the campaign to civilise the savages. As the September 15 London Telegraph reported on the possibility it could spread. The article said: “An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme.”
I must admit, I was pretty much against this potential new war to enable large oil corporations to get their hands on more of the dwindling supplies of a fossil fuel, the burning of which is threatening the destroy the planet via global warming, until I read a Telegraph article that Iran was training 3000 female ninja assassins to defend their country.
I am not sure if war on Iran will do much to strengthen the forces of civilisation, but if it is going to involve Iranian female ninja assassins, then the latest phase of the world's descent into savage barbarism will at least be pretty cool.